10th July 2010 – The State-Region Unified Conference has finally approved the Third Conto Energia for 2011-2013 and the Guidelines for the development of the authorization procedure as per art. 12 of Legislative Decree 387/2003.

The two provisions for Feed-in Tariffs and Guidelines, arriving with a respective seven year and five year delay, represent a breath of fresh air for the renewable energy sector which is otherwise under much pressure following modifications to the procedure for green certificates proposed by the financial budget under art. 45.

The Third Conto Energia ( download the decree outline in Italian) has an objective of 3GW in the 2011-2013 period, with the possibility to add MW installed in the 14 months which follow if the abovementioned objective is reached before the end of 2013. The Conto Energia will facilitate the healthy growth of the Italian photovoltaic market, which will be consolidated as one of the primary world markets as it increasingly closes in on the German market. The incentive tariffs shown in the table below will be reduced by approximately 20% by the end of 2011 and subsequently by 6% for the years 2012 and 2013.

The guidelines ( download text in Italian) for the procedure as per article 12 of Legislative Decree 29 December 2003, no. 387 for the authorization of the construction and operation of plants for the production of electricity using renewable energy sources, as well as the technical guidelines for such plants, represent a provision which provides uniformity to various regional entities on the matter of the development of a single authorization procedure. The following points are particularly important:

clarification that network connection operations are to be considered operations related to renewable energy plants, and therefore follow the regional single authorization procedure, together with the production plant;

univocal identification of operations necessarily subject to regional single authorization, those considered extraordinary maintenance operations which can be carried out using a DIA (Dichiarazione Inizio Attività – Notice of Commencement), and those which are considered free construction activities which simply require notification to the Municipality;

specification of the minimum contents of supporting documentation to be presented at the same time as the request for single authorization;

reaffirmation of the peremptory period for the conclusion of the authorization procedure within 180 days;

reaffirmation that it is not necessary to vary the urban planning instrument in force for installations in zones classified as agricultural.

specification of criteria for the installation of plants in landscapes and territories, in particular for wind farms;

establishment of the methods of definition of non suitable areas for the Regions.

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